How to Motivate the Unmotivated

They were motivated. Now, they work when you’re around and doze when you’re not. What a difference three months makes.

Coercion, pressure, or rewards may work momentarily. Performance improves while you’re watching and slows when you’re away. Great for control freaks and power-trip-leaders! It makes them feel “important,” even if it’s frustrating.

Pressure and coercion are like water to fire.

The need to pressures or coerce indicates they’re not interested.

“Get past this notion that motivation is something that one person does to another…,” Daniel Pink, author of, Drive, referring to a conversation with Edward Deci.

De-motivation and control:

Feeling controlled de-motivates. Pressure says you’re in control and they aren’t.

How do you feel when someone tries to control you? Do you calmly walk along or dig in your heels? It depends on how much power the controller has and how much you need the job. But, no one enjoys external pressure.

Make people feel powerless and they’ll
act like they’re powerless.
The powerless always resist, eventually.

Five ways to motivate the unmotivated:

Reject the notion that motivation is something you do to others.

Give power don’t take it. Power enables control. Control engages. Feeling controlled disengages.

Put more in if you want more out. Train, develop, and release. Proficiency enable action; incompetence blocks it.

Tap their interests. You don’t have to pressure people to do what interests them.

Great topic Dan! The buzz word being used today from what I have seen is engage!!! Horray Engage!!!!

I know I am so full of old and tired self help phrases just wants to make u puke, right? Hehe

The thing is fundamentally what works doesn’t change only the people and the language used as descriptors. Humans are So interesting. What makes it all such fun.

All eyes on me(Vince Lombardi) people DO for two reasons and two reasons only, avoid pain, gain pleasure. They determine that internally so my opinion, I can’t inspire them, they have to do that.

Ok another old concept said simply but still just plain ole common sense, if u want to get what u want find somebody who has it, find and what they did to get it and do what they did. Period. You can call it anything you want but that is fundamentally what happens whether you want to call the spade the spade. It’ a a spade. Keep it simple superstar!

I heard this guy interviewed at Comicon he was dressed up in a Star Wars outfit! When interviewed he said he was Darth Nilus, whoever that IS?? All he said was ENGAGE!!

When I feel I am drifting I find that and listen to it and it helps me get my eye back on the prize.

Ok disclaimer, everything I just pecked out on my iPhone it is my opinion and my opinion only. Works for me think it will work for you. Take what you like and leave the rest.

Right what you want to do, but you decide between the choices based of anticipation of gain or avoid end of pain .

You have figured out what u want to do which is fantastic…,happy for you. What I looking for one day is to get paid large for doing exactly what I want too!!!! That’s freedom!! I am still having to do what I have to!!!!!

With enough power, pressure gives the false sense of working… pressure will create compliance. That pressure does unintended damage somewhere else, and you never know where that damage will surface. What appears to be motivation, causes deep demotivation (from which recovery will be difficult). It can happen at all levels of the organization and it is contagious.

The concept of motivation is long debated, discussed and written but there are lot to reserach. I believe, motivation provides short term result but long term impact is costly. And that is why motivated poeple live the company more frequently. I totally agree with that control, command, coerce, power can motivate people but as long as you exert pressure. Sooner you release the pressure, motivation turn into de motivation. In my research for morale, I have understood that pressure motivate becuase it creates fear. So, in the sense, fear is the greatest motivator. But when people are motivated without power, they have high morale. This is the major difference between motivation and morale. One is generally externally influenced,other is internally inspired.So, inspiration makes major difference in motivation. And I strongly believe that inspiration can be done by creating feeling of positive energy, believing in self strength and hopeful optimism to put extra effort in order to achieve goals.
In business, there are generally three practices- transactional, transformational and relational. And among them relationsal practices that focuses on creating, developing and nurturing relationship plays significant role in boosting morale. Similarly, transformational practices that shows leadership personal example of integrity, honesty, fairness create future by providing strong example for employees to follow and remain in the system.

Forced compliance is rooted in fear. Fear of losing a job, for example. It’s easy and quick to motivate with fear. It takes time and attention to understand what makes people tick and help them find ways to connect internal motivations with expected organizational behaviors.

It’s easy to be a leader (in name only, that is) if you take a one-size fits all approach. But to be a true leader, a successful leader means to know the people you serve (your staff) and learn their individual needs. Engage is such a great word for this. You can’t lead successfully if you think you can just phone it in. Much of leadership turns out to be a very individual process. No two people on your staff are the same; so it only goes to reason that no two people are going to respond to the same “formula” for motivation or learning or performance.

Dan, you amaze me — even overwhelm me at time — with your ability to come up with valuable, on-point topics like these . . . not once, not twice, but SEVEN days a week. Thanks!

Great blog today Dan. I’ve always enjoyed listening to debates over the Autocratic vs Democratic styles of leadership. How one can defend the offensive and demoralizing Autocratic approach is one of those question’s that make ya go ‘Hm-m’
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Was just speaking to a project manager yesterday about how one of the team leads so needs to be the disseminater of ALL information, controls EVERY client conversation, and shoots down ANY differing perspective that I no longer participate in client/team phone calls.

I attend…. but I don’t PARTICIPATE🙂

After all, why should I? He knows everything…. and when he makes some decision detrimental to the project, he’ll figure it out eventually.🙂

I usually look at your posts for work purposes, but today’s made me think of raising kids, too. Maybe it’s because I have two high school aged teenagers. In both situations, this holds true. Thanks for your insightfulness.

how do you pressure or motivate your leaders to pay attention to the level of de-motivation they are raising in the (just struggling) team?
the problem with pressure as a life style is that, for small projects and weak people, it works.
as smoke or sugar, it doesn’t hurt immediately, but after decads it surely does, a lot.
but how do you say to the dog to stay away from the cats?

This is the first time I find myself wanting to argue with some details of one of your posts.

I think the post begins with a call to “stop demotivating your people” with pressure and coercion. because it doesn’t work very long. And I agree with this point. Bad managers really do de-motivate their motivated employees. But managers who de-motivate employees cannot hear this message. So, the message is mainly being heard by managers who already agree with it.

That leads me to struggle with the listing in the post of how to motivate the unmotivated. Are we directing this toward bad managers or good ones? I think the better managers are still reading the post, but this isn’t a good list of suggestions for good managers. The good manager should distinguish whether the lack of motivation is inherent or might be due to the way he is being managed. Some people are unmotivated individuals no matter who manages them. I believe that trying to motivate the truly unmotivated is a huge uphill battle. Unmotivated people make bad employees and can’t be solved by giving them more freedom, or power or by finding their interests. They were a recruiting error that needs to be corrected.

Re: motivating employees, I think good managers don’t motivate or de-motivate employees—they provide the opportunities and assistance for already motivated people to succeed and excel.

Hmm, motivate not ‘to’ but ‘for’…wonder if motivate ‘with’ might even work better? Motivation mutuality? Motivation reciprocity? Do we create exponential win-wins by identifying mutual interests and motivators?

Enjoyed the audio snippet Dan, thanks for including it. I do like Daniel’s ‘servant salesmanship’ perspective,

No person that has the real vocation for leadership will accept control as a matter of absolute authority from another person. That of course will de-motivate and will give birth to rejection as in that kind when you feel you talk to the walls.
Personaly I see the need to control a big weakness and as a matter of fact as a lack of confidence in others as well as in ones self. Motivation by giving responsabilities is the best solution for any kind of person. Or so I believe.
De-motivation must be treated as a disease that rapidly evolves in many forms worse that this lack of interest. In such a situation everybody looses. A leader must observ and intervine where such issues appear. Communication will most certainly be helpful.

They are not unmotivated; they are just not engaged. They are simply “working” and maintaining a steady state of non-improvement. Same salary for same work week after week after week.

I wrote up an article with statistics and all called, “I Quit! Nevermind. Whatever…” that works around different aspects of this issue. It is often seen as not being a problem, since the majority of the unmotivated are not problem performers.

Just discovered your blog…I hope to stick through it… Am quite young and inexperienced, so this place is going to be a great learning experience for me! …
I believe, an ideal organization would consist of employees demonstrating self-leadership and headed by a transformational leader in the organization!

The first 6 or 7 posts in my blog were about Daniel Pink’s autonomy, master, and purpose. It makes a lot of sense. In the final post of the series, I pointed out that he forgot about relationships. It’s good to see that he does see the power of relationships in motivation. The simplicity of this book really made it speak to me. Check it out at http://motivationalschoolleadership.blogspot.com
Mike

Very instructive. If I understand correctly, the key to employee engagement is leader engagement: To help unmotivated employees engage with their work, leaders must engage with the employees. All subsequent steps flow from the relationships established and the knowledge gained.

Looking back at times when I was motivated or fought to recover motivation, I can confirm that the level of personal interest and acceptance my leaders showed made the difference. The better bosses made me feel significant through respect and regard. The best bosses, though, drew me forward by placing professional goals before me.

As to one comment above: In the preceding paragraph, underscore acceptance. The best leaders love their followers and understand that EVERYBODY carries baggage. Managers may label people as terminally unmotivated, but leaders do not give up hope. Even a great leader may still have to send an unmotivated employee out to search for his niche, but he does so with encouragement and not with condemnation.

Hi Dan, I like this post. Short and sweet! I think for me, jim Collins summed it up nicely in his book Good To Great – imho one of the greatest books of all time1 – when he says it is not a leaders (or managers) job to motivate people. Instead, they should focus on removing barriers to self motivation. ‘Nuff said😉